We received this appeal to South African President Thabo Mbeki from a subscriber today:

Mr Mbeki 18th April 2008

Mr Mbeki,
It is late,
So late,
And we, a nation
Watch through the barred gate,
Of justice.
Which you walked through
To be president,
Above apartheid
And hate.
But, you make us wait
For just words you will never say.

Like Pilate,
You wash your hands
Of what has been in your power to do.
You slip through a side door
And allow
This Mad High Priest of the Past,
Mugabe,
To crucify,
Fourteen million people.
And the living water
Of deliverance,
Shimmers,
In your still hand.

Blood, exhaustion and sickness;
And filth and misery
And hunger
The pall of Hell,
Covers us.

And, you say,
“Zimbabwe ? Not today.”
To the Security Council.
And so, a nation is hung from a tree
And ZANU murderers walk free.

We ache with questions.
What scales cover your eyes ?
What steel seals your ears ?
What vault insulates your heart,
From the drum of echoing truth,
Of millions of voices ?

Does your conscience never wake you,
With the doves at dawn,
And warn,
Of our horror ?

Justice stands on a high hill.
Lord, deliver us from Dialogue and Debate.
As our People crawl through the river, mud and wire

To your Limpopo shore
To implore;
“Work..?.”

Our stolen elections lie scattered,
Like silver pieces
In the fields of the dead.
Blessed by your election monitors from the past,
Who will be asked, again,
“Why, did this happen ?”

It is late Mr Mbeki, so late
And your stubborn will
Has finished many of us.
What obscene loyalty compels protection
Of this geriatric murderer.

A liberation hero who kills his own people,
Remains a hero, no less ?
These stale lies of brotherhood
Gall the ears of mourners
At our funeral pyres.

Already night is falling
And the devil moves in darkness
His hyenas hunt again
And we the living,
Strain,
To hear the voice of any Shepherd.

Mr Mbeki,
If only I could make you
One of us here, the unseen,
For a day
To see what you have ignored.
To feel the grief, to taste the fear
Racing across parched fields
And empty huts
Like the wind called
Gukuruhundi
Like the storm called
Murambatsvina
Maybe then your heart would break
And you would awake.
Too late…

This entry was posted on April 21st, 2008 at 6:40 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.